WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.920 10 years ago, having a 20 megabit internet connection was pretty darn solid, but these 00:00:04.920 --> 00:00:11.760 days it seems like 200 megabits, or 10 times faster, is on the low end of what many ISPs 00:00:11.760 --> 00:00:19.160 offer. And there's no sign of stopping. So considering how quickly both speeds and demand have risen lately, how fast could our 00:00:19.160 --> 00:00:22.720 internet be in just a few years time? 00:00:22.720 --> 00:00:27.920 Let's ponder our orbs, shall we? Oh my. 00:00:27.920 --> 00:00:32.600 So have you heard of Moore's Law, that famous observation that CPUs would have twice as 00:00:32.600 --> 00:00:39.240 many transistors every two years? There's actually a similar law called Nielsen's Law that says top-end home internet speeds 00:00:39.240 --> 00:00:46.440 get 50% faster each year. And this trend has held up very well since the internet first started gaining popularity. 00:00:46.440 --> 00:00:53.040 Better than Moore's Law, in fact. Interestingly, ISPs even use Nielsen's Law to project what speed tiers they should aim 00:00:53.040 --> 00:00:59.400 to offer customers in the future. And right now, it looks like 5 gigabit could be the next big thing. 00:00:59.400 --> 00:01:03.640 But hold on a second, there are plenty of 10 gigabit devices out there right now. 00:01:03.640 --> 00:01:08.000 You can go out and buy network switches and cables that support 10 gigabit Ethernet, and 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:12.600 the newest standards for sending data through a cable modem also support 10 gig. 00:01:12.600 --> 00:01:16.120 So why are we talking about speeds leveling off at only 5 gigs? 00:01:16.120 --> 00:01:20.720 While there are a very small number of ISPs that do offer 10 gigabit internet, most of 00:01:20.720 --> 00:01:24.200 them don't have anything near that fast, for a couple of reasons. 00:01:24.240 --> 00:01:27.740 One is that they don't want the underlying tech to get overloaded, so they try to make 00:01:27.740 --> 00:01:31.440 sure capacity is double the top customer tier. 00:01:31.440 --> 00:01:36.440 So if the infrastructure actually supports 10 gig, a major ISP might only offer 5 gig 00:01:36.440 --> 00:01:42.840 as its high-end option. So the other big reason speeds may level off at 5 gigabits in the near future is simply 00:01:42.840 --> 00:01:48.400 demand. You see, the average connection these days is somewhere around 200 megabits, and even 00:01:48.400 --> 00:01:53.760 if you're trying to stream multiple 4K videos, those only take around 25 megs per stream. 00:01:53.800 --> 00:01:58.240 So the average 200 megabit plan seems to be more than enough for many customers, limiting 00:01:58.240 --> 00:02:02.240 the number of paying customers screaming for a multi-gig connection. 00:02:02.240 --> 00:02:06.560 And when people do experience slowdowns on a 200 meg connection, it's very often a result 00:02:06.560 --> 00:02:12.000 of, say, putting their wireless router in a silly location, rather than the pipe not 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:16.080 being fat enough. Even though it's hard to think of a pipe that's too fat. 00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:20.680 But what about upload speeds, which are still on average less than 20 megabits a second 00:02:20.680 --> 00:02:26.880 for a home connection in the US? With smartphones that record 4K video, increasing numbers of people that work from home, and 00:02:26.880 --> 00:02:32.880 3 IoT devices for every person on Earth by 2025, there's definitely demand for a larger 00:02:32.880 --> 00:02:38.160 upstream pipe. So we might see this before we see super-goddy download speeds. 00:02:38.160 --> 00:02:43.080 I'd still expect to see 5 gigabit download speeds being offered sometime around 2024 00:02:43.080 --> 00:02:48.760 if Nielsen's law holds up, especially as multiple 4K HDR streams, large game downloads, 00:02:48.760 --> 00:02:53.200 and video chats are becoming more common and eat through bandwidth quickly. 00:02:53.200 --> 00:02:57.320 Major ISPs, such as Comcast and Spectrum in the United States, have already successfully 00:02:57.320 --> 00:03:02.400 tested speeds at or near 10 gigabit, and it can all be done over existing cabling using 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:07.200 a hybrid approach, where fiber carries internet traffic to a node, at which point plain old 00:03:07.200 --> 00:03:12.080 coaxial cable takes over and carries that data to your house at high speed. 00:03:12.080 --> 00:03:16.640 But how can we go even faster in the future if most equipment currently has a 10 gig maximum? 00:03:16.840 --> 00:03:22.040 Well, there's a new standard called 802.3CA for higher speed fiber. 00:03:22.040 --> 00:03:27.160 The idea is to use multiple wavelengths of light, each one carrying 25 gigabits per second. 00:03:27.160 --> 00:03:32.120 You could combine, say, four of them for a 100 gigabit link, and then sort them out with 00:03:32.120 --> 00:03:37.800 passive splitters to provide home internet connections of 25 or 50 gigabits each. 00:03:37.800 --> 00:03:41.960 That's still a little ways off, but for those of you who want to watch TechWiki in 16K, 00:03:42.920 --> 00:03:46.120 I'm sure it can arrive soon enough. Can you imagine? 00:03:46.120 --> 00:03:49.880 You can see my pores. Hey, thanks for watching this video, guys. 00:03:49.880 --> 00:03:53.320 Like it if you like it, dislike it if you dislike it, and check out our other videos. 00:03:53.320 --> 00:03:56.920 Comment below with video suggestions, and don't forget to subscribe and follow it to 00:03:56.920 --> 00:03:59.880 make sure you're the first to see those 16K Tech Quickies.